I Never Knew You
by Ibelin
Summary: After the defeat at Starkiller, Kylo Ren is on his way to Snoke to complete his training and, during meditation, he gets a visit from someone he'd always wanted to meet. It doesn't go as well as he'd hoped. Be careful what you wish for - especially when what you wish for involves Darth Vader. (Another take on the ever-popular "Kylo Ren meets Anakin Skywalker's Force ghost" story.)


All meditations began the same: clearing one's mind.

Kylo Ren knelt, and the contact with the _Finalizer_ _'_ _s_ cool decking chilled him even through his clothes. His thoughts spun, rising and falling in chaotic orbits.

Fear. The hot throb of the healing wound in his side, the dull ache of the scar on his face. He couldn't make a single movement without feeling the way it pulled at his skin, and remembering his failure. Fear. His grandfather's lightsaber, in someone else's hands. Fear, sitting deep in his bones, crawling up between his shoulder blades. Taking a long, slow breath, Kylo Ren reached out for the clarity of the Force and brushed everything else away like cobwebs.

Step one.

A multitude of different techniques accompanied this step, supposedly meant to help. Taking a passive posture, closing one's eyes, repetition of ritual phrases or movements, and even specialized breathing techniques were all utilized by those who practiced the tradition of meditation. The bones of it, though, were always the same.

Calm. Lack of distractions. Focus.

The ship, a hive of focused life in countless layers, murmured constantly in the Force around him. Kylo let it. His knees against the floor, the steady work of his heart and lungs, became part of this background, no closer to him than all the nameless workings of the _Finalizer_. It was all just machinery for his use, instruments to channel strength in different ways.

Kylo Ren had been familiar with meditation almost since he could remember. Only now, instead of sinking into the emptiness and peace that had been his aim under his uncle's tutelage, he cleared his mind of all that could distract from his goal. Drawing closer to the Dark, he set his mind upon power as he closed his eyes.

Starkiller Base had been what many considered the embodiment of power. The ability to melt whole star systems out of the sky was surely not nothing, but it was not what he sought. What purpose did the kind of sheer destruction that created rubble fields out of planets serve, when he could not control himself? When he could not control those around him?

The memory of _the girl_ came to him suddenly. Eyes tightly shut, Kylo Ren could almost see her expression as she sat bolt upright in his chair, restraints forgotten and face exalted with the rush of an unknown purpose. The touch of her mind had been like ice, unbearable in its uncompromising clarity, and the newly-healed scar etched across his face made sure to remind him every day of how he had failed. He'd been weak, distracted.

 _Injured_ , a part of Kylo Ren tried to whisper, but Supreme Leader Snoke would hardly accept such an excuse, and neither would he.

Snoke was displeased, Kylo Ren knew, and he couldn't suppress a shudder as he remembered Snoke's promise to _complete his training_. He was still weak, he knew. His encounters with the _girl_ had proved that. He needed Snoke, needed what Snoke could teach him, but oh, Force. The starved little sliver of Light that he could never quite extinguish inside himself rebelled.

No. Clear your mind.

Kylo Ren knelt on the floor at the foot of his bed, instead of the meditation chamber where Vader's helmet was displayed. Still, the center of his focus remained the same.

 _Grandfather_ , he thought.

Minutes passed with nothing to mark them but the even rise and fall of Kylo Ren's breathing. The lamp in the corner of the room turned off automatically with a soft click, signaling the star destroyer's transition to night cycle. Sunk deep in his own consciousness, Kylo Ren was insensible to anything outside his own strife with the Force, until the sudden awareness of a presence shook his focus from him. It was unfamiliar and imposed itself upon his senses as suddenly as a slap.

The beginnings of a frustrated snarl pulling at his mouth, Kylo Ren reached out in the Force to discover who had made the fatal mistake of interrupting him during meditations. His eyes opened in surprise when he found no one outside the door to his chambers. No one in the approaching hallway.

In a snap of movement he was standing, back against the wall, flaming 'saber hissing and spitting in his hand. Someone was _inside_ his chambers. The ruby glow of his lightsaber was the only illumination in the room, and shadows flickered and danced as Kylo lifted the 'saber to point at the darkness opposite him.

"Who's there?"

The troopers knew better than to stray into this part of the ship without permission, and no officer would have simply walked into his quarters without announcing themselves. On top of that, his door was securely locked, and he certainly would have sensed their approach before they made it inside. The presence he sensed was strong, so much so that he almost couldn't pinpoint where exactly the person was, and had simply _appeared_. It was impossible, and yet Kylo Ren knew that the darkness surrounding him was not empty.

Despite so knowing, he was not prepared for it to _speak_.

"You call, when you do not know who may answer." The voice sent icy chills skittering up Kylo Ren's neck, but it was nothing to the laughter that followed - terrible and dissonant, with a shrill mechanical edge. "It is a dangerous pastime you indulge in, you who call yourself Kylo Ren."

"Show yourself."

Waving a sword about in the darkness like a frightened child was foolish. Kylo dialed up the lights with a touch of the Force. Yellow flooded the space, wiping imaginary nightmares away in its wake and leaving behind only the room and its sparse furnishings. There was no one there - only Kylo, and the weapon that still burned in his grip.

He did not relax. The presence, an unmistakable pressure in the Force, did not vanish, which meant one of two things. Either _something_ was still here with him, or Kylo had at last gone truly mad. He wasn't quite sure which was the preferable alternative.

Eyes narrowing, Kylo reached for the rage beginning to pool inside him at this intrusion, this attack. He took a breath and called on the Force, aiming for the persistent presence and reaching to seize it. His intent was a boiling wave, ready to savage and tear to pieces everything it found, and it was turned back upon him with enough power that Kylo actually staggered. It was as though a star had detonated in the middle of the room, the irresistible force of a soundless explosion scouring him raw.

"You of all people should know, Kylo Ren."

Kylo gasped. He choked and strained and fought against the grip that held him by the throat and ripped him open, obliterating his shields and clawing its way inside the very essence of his spirit. The way the girl had used his mental probe against him had been a pinprick in comparison to this tidal wave that laid him bare, the uneven truth of everything he was, to its icy disgust. Struggling was like trying to fight an avalanche. He was helpless.

"You should know that the dark isn't as easy to banish as that."

Black swam in Kylo's vision, and he had lost the distinction between his physical existence and the Force. He didn't know whether he stood or fell, or whether or not he still held his lightsaber. Around him, the galaxy spun, the stars and all its wonders too fast to focus on, and something greater than the galaxy lifted him up in judgment. It was the all-consuming submersion of the deepest meditation, only this time Kylo was being held under and drowned.

The voice, when it spoke again, lanced through him like a caustic bolt from an electrical storm. "When you were still very young, your parents turned on the lights, but your nightmares did not vanish. _He_ taught you the resilient infection of darkness long ago. The one you serve."

"I serve... myself," Kylo grit out, still snarling, even in the face of irresistible power. He did Snoke's bidding, yes. He submitted to Snoke's training, yes. He needed Snoke to make him powerful, to teach him to fully master the Force. But... when the time came... that power would be his own, and Snoke no longer necessary. It was his destiny to _rule_ , not serve.

The presence that crushed him contracted, pressing so close to his core that it _burned_. Kylo thought that perhaps somewhere far away his own voice screamed, but he couldn't be sure.

The voice laughed. "I once thought as you do."

Dragging in a hoarse breath, Kylo Ren discovered that he had lungs.

"I once bound myself to serve the dark side, and thought I had gained _power_." As it spoke, the voice softened until it was almost a hiss, and as it receded so did the excruciating suffocation of the unseen presence. Kylo could blink his own eyes, feel his own hands pressed to the cold decking, and the shudders that wracked his bent body. The wound in his side throbbed.

"At the last, I discovered that I was simply a slave. As you will, Kylo Ren."

The voice did not sound mocking or triumphant. Almost, it was resigned - tired. Very human. As the presence had drawn away, consolidating in front of him, Kylo had regained enough awareness to find that he was kneeling, head bowed towards the floor and palms flat against it. Even then, Kylo hadn't dared to look up.

Now, he did.

He saw his own room, his quarters on the Finalizer, as they had always been: bed, fresher, closet and drawer set inlaid smoothly into the wall. Everything was cast in an unbalanced glow of yellow and orange from the medium setting of the lights he'd turned on, but aside from that the room appeared ordinary. It took Kylo a minute, blinking, to realize that the shadow directly before him, in front of the door, stood of its own volition and was cast by nothing.

His lightsaber lay flung at the foot of the bed, powered off. Kylo called it into his hand, but did not move from his knees. "Who are you." His voice rasped in his own ears, as though it hadn't been used in days.

The shadow, inky-black and flowing in vaguely the shape of a standing figure, moved toward him. Light shifted over it as though dappling over the surface of a dark cloak. The _presence_ still loomed like a blazing tower in the Force, almost more real to Kylo's senses than anything else he could feel.

"You don't know? You called for me."

"No, I don't know you."

He didn't. He _didn't_.

The specter moved, fluttered - a rise and fall, an even cadence - as if it were... breathing. A soft hiss filled the room, and then a dragging rasp that sent chills up Kylo's spine even though he'd never heard it before- He'd never-

This time when the figure spoke, its voice was deeper, again overlaid with a mechanical growl. "You asked for my help, Kylo Ren."

 _No._

Kylo ruthlessly buried the awareness trying to rise as panic in his chest. He _had_ called. He had asked- But no. No.

The specter lowered itself until he was face to face with its formless shadowy hood, still looming slightly over him. Kylo was afraid, he knew, feeling as if from a distance the tension in his muscles and the sweat of his palms. Was he about to die? Perhaps, but the figure hadn't killed him yet, and this was nothing compared to the excruciating intrusion of its presence upon him in the Force.

"Not what you expected?" asked the figure, and it lifted a visibly mechanical hand to pull its hood back. A face was revealed, or something like a face. Ruined human features blended with wiring, the bones of one eye socket replaced by jutting metal, and the dull glint of hollow machinery filling every shadow not touched by the room's dim light. It was like nothing Kylo had ever imagined - ever seen in meditation - but he couldn't spend much time staring at the specter's face.

Smoldering yellow eyes pinned him, and Kylo couldn't look away. The figure tilted his head slightly, gaze narrowing. "You have killed your father, Kylo Ren."

"Yes," gasped Kylo, all the air leaving his chest at once. "Yes."

It had been days - two, three days. Bacta had sealed the gash across Kylo's face to a pink line, given his broken ribs and bleeding side a good start on healing. But it had been days, and his father's - no, Han Solo's - his _face_. His face, and the momentary brush of his fingertips over Kylo's cheek just before he fell. The planet had exploded - Han Solo's body vaporized.

It had been days, so why did it feel like it was still happening?

"Snoke said-" Kylo's throat clicked audibly as he swallowed. The specter waited patiently. "My master trained me for this. It is- It was a test of my strength."

"Did you pass this test?"

"Yes."

"And do you feel _stronger_?"

Kylo had never seen this face before, but the burning eyes, the sound of hissing breath - they resonated in his scattered memories like discordantly plucked strings. He had never seen this face before, and yet his entire being hummed with recognition. This room felt universes apart from the rest of the galaxy, like perhaps everything else had ceased to exist while he knelt, and if he chose to open the door he would find only empty void outside.

His perception was limited to this room and the apparition before him, Kylo realized. He couldn't sense anything else. Not even Snoke.

The awareness that he couldn't feel Snoke anywhere, that perhaps he was _truly alone_ , felt like coming awake for the first time. Yet even here, even now, Kylo couldn't admit his fears - his heresy. How he had stood on the bridge and felt no anger flare to spur him on, no strength. How he had felt the power hollow out from his chest and drain from his limbs, falling away with his father's body.

Of course he had lost the fight to the girl, after. Of course he had.

He had felt the swift punch of doubt. Snoke had promised that Han Solo's death would empower him, would strip him of the sentimental fetters that still held him back. Kylo remembered turning and holding himself straight and tall for Chewbacca; he remembered the feeling, little more than a mere impulse - agony and terror - that Snoke had been _wrong_.

Here, held fast in the gaze of narrowed yellow eyes, Kylo let himself pause. Snoke was not here. Cautiously, he _tasted_ that fleeting thought with all its traitorous sting, turning it over and looking at it head-on for the very first time.

But the specter would not stay forever. If it did not kill him, he knew eventually it would disappear. Snoke would return.

Did he feel _stronger_? The question felt like it had been asked long ago. Months had turned by and seasons had passed while he waited to answer, but. There was really only one thing he could say.

"Yes." Kylo's voice was steady.

The specter breathed, lifeless and grating. "If that is so, why then do you keep asking for my help, Kylo Ren?" When he said the name, it sounded ridiculous, like something a child playing make-believe would invent. "If you're so strong," he snarled, "then why do I _hear_ you? ' _Save me, save me, please, Grandfather.'_ "

Kylo lowered his head. He had never said that. He had never _begged_. But he couldn't say that he had never wanted to. In meditation before the helmet was the one place he had allowed himself to be weak. The specter sighed, drifted lower. Now they sat across from each other, kneeling in a pose that mimicked joint meditation; he'd sat like this before, when he had been much smaller, with another master.

"Tell me then, Kylo Ren, what is it you need my help with so very badly?"

"I want to be _free_." The ferocity of Kylo's answer surprised even him. It had risen up in his chest like a tidal wave, but what did it mean? He wanted- He wanted- "I need the strength to do what is necessary. To let go of everything that holds me back, to fully embrace the power of the dark-"

"I have been dead for a very long time." The specter's voice grated electronically. "I'm tired. Are you tired, Kylo Ren? I grow weary of listening to you injure yourself and then cry out that it hurts. Surely _you_ must grow weary of doing it."

Kylo couldn't answer, couldn't move as the specter reached out a metal hand, gleaming dully golden in the light. The fingers' pinprick touch felt cold and sharp, undeniably real against his temple.

"Child of hope," whispered the specter, and paused for so long that Kylo thought perhaps that was all he meant to say. His eyes burned as he stared, studying Kylo. "Your life is an open wound. Would you thank me if I ended it for you, I wonder."

His words were contemplative, empty of threat. That didn't stop them from pulling so sharply at an ache deep in Kylo's gut that he almost gasped. He had no answer.

"You know who I am."

"Yes." The word felt like it had been dragged out of him.

"Say it."

"Vader," rasped Kylo.

"Mm, yes." Ghostly metal fingers tapped twice at Kylo's cheek before withdrawing. "So I was, in life. Do you know who I was in death?"

The specter's face had changed somehow, translucent and lit inwardly, but Kylo honestly couldn't spare the focus to pinpoint the shift. "No."

"The protector of _my children_."

Those words were like a prison door grinding shut. Vader rose, towering over Kylo like smoke rising from a burning volcano. Senselessly, Kylo found himself thinking of that village on Jakku. By the time his command shuttle had taken off with Poe Dameron onboard, the smoke from its destruction had blotted out half the early-morning horizon. They had been utterly at his mercy - men, women, and children that day - and no one had come to their aid.

Kylo knew with the certainty of the Force that today, no one would come to his.

"My last breathing act was to give my life to keep them from harm. Did you know that, Kylo Ren?"

He did. Luke Skywalker had made sure Vader's weakness was common knowledge in the family. He'd spoken of it as something profound and _precious_.

"You called me. Did you think I would praise you, for the destruction you have wrought?"

No. He had not knelt before the helmet seeking _praise_. The thought was meaningless. Kylo had thought of his grandfather, of the Darkness, and dared to hope for something else.

"You thought I would _understand_ you." Vader's breath hissed. "I do. I know about wanting to be _free_. The power of the Dark is strong, but the victory it gives is not the kind through which chains are broken. I tell you, Kylo Ren, that if this is the path you follow, you will never be free."

"Will you kill me?"

Kylo's head was tipped back, looking up at Vader from where he still knelt. The burning yellow eyes still pierced him, but he felt curiously steady. He did not know what he wanted the answer to be. Vader stilled, movement Kylo hadn't even noticed disappearing and leaving him like a statue, or a lifeless droid.

"No," he said eventually, slow and faraway, though his voice was very human. "You will not die today."

Kylo shuddered.

"Have you felt the awakening, Kylo Ren?"

"Yes." He stiffened, attention sharpening. Yes, yes, he had. What did it mean?

"For long enough, the Light has been silent. There is an... imbalance." Vader said the word with damning distaste. "As there was when I lived. I must restore the balance. You have killed your father, Kylo Ren."

There was no answer to give. Kylo waited for judgment, for the sentence he could feel coalescing in the Force.

"I will go to the one who gave you life."

No.

"You will not die tonight. If she grants you your life again - you will have time. If not, I will return tomorrow."

Vader did not have to explain for what purpose he would return. Kylo snarled, suddenly agonizingly aware of the scar on his face, the tears in his eyes, the subservience of his posture. "No. Don't," he demanded. Wild desperation caught in his chest at the thought of Leia holding his life and death in her hands. He would rather gasp out his last breaths here on the floor than be put in that position again. "Strike me down if you wish, but don't go to _her_."

"Cease, Kylo Ren," said Vader, almost offhanded. He gazed at Kylo evenly, and a long moment passed like a single breath. Narrowing his eyes to yellow slits, Vader added, "We will meet again, child of my child, one way or another."

Between the space of two blinks, he faded.

Kylo tried to keep focused on Vader's form, but eventually even the glow of his eyes was impossible to distinguish. At the very last, Kylo was unprepared when the presence itself vanished from the Force. Shock doubled him over, a similar jolt to being dropped back into the galaxy after days of the seclusion of hyperspace, but vast magnitudes greater. As if from a great distance, Kylo heard his own voice gasping.

He cast himself wide in the Force, reckless and frantic. Nothing. There was nothing. The ship hummed around him like a heartbeat, the whole galaxy still spinning, but Kylo was alone. Alone, with nothing but the cold hilt of his 'saber, taunting him from where it lay, and the way his hands trembled.

Kylo did not remain alone for long. He never had.

Bowing his head even further, pressing his forehead to the chilled deck, Kylo tried not to think. _Clear your mind_ , he thought. Wasn't that how all this had started? _Think of nothing, be nothing, let the Force settle all around you, inside you, a part of you like the air that fills your lungs_. When it returned, he barely noticed. It felt inevitable, like returning to solid ground from an unsteady ship.

All as it should be, as it must be.

He cut his nails into his palms, until the pain was brighter than any thought. He did not think about victory, and broken chains. He did not think about the terror and stinging relief of being alone. _All as it should be_ , Kylo told himself, as Snoke's voice again began to whisper.


End file.
